Bridge and Tunnel Boys
Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and the Metropolitan Sound of the American Century
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- $31.99
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- $31.99
Publisher Description
Born four months apart, Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel both released their debut albums in the early 1970s, quickly becoming two of the most successful rock stars of their generation. While their critical receptions have been very different, surprising parallels emerge when we look at the arcs of their careers and the musical influences that have inspired them.
Bridge and Tunnel Boys compares the life and work of Long Islander Joel and Asbury Park, New Jersey, native Springsteen, considering how each man forged a distinctive sound that derived from his unique position on the periphery of the Big Apple. Locating their music within a longer tradition of the New York metropolitan sound, dating back to the early 1900s, cultural historian Jim Cullen explores how each man drew from the city’s diverse racial and ethnic influences. His study explains how, despite frequently releasing songs that questioned the American dream, Springsteen and Joel were able to appeal to wide audiences during both the national uncertainty of the 1970s and the triumphalism of the Reagan era. By placing these two New York–area icons in a new context, Bridge and Tunnel Boys allows us to hear their most beloved songs with new appreciation.
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Historian Cullen (1980) tracks in this meticulous study how Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel ascended to fame as "embodiments of a... metropolitan culture that emerged and flourished in the late twentieth century." Describing the period between the 1970s and 2000 as "the Indian Summer of the American Empire... a moment of mortal splendor," Cullen contends that the era was captured "with unusual acuity and durability" by Springsteen and Joel, each the product of "communities of people living, working and moving within and between a cluster of urban and suburban, industrial and residential settings." These metropolitan tableaus, Cullen continues, fostered a musical culture of "sauciness, variety, and a strong tendency for integration." He traces the contours of his subjects' careers, including how their record label, Columbia Records, pigeonholed Springsteen as "The New Dylan" and Joel as "The American Elton John," initially thwarting their success, before each wrested back control and reached superstardom with 1975's Born to Run and 1977's The Stranger, respectively. Elsewhere, Cullen probes the overlapping if sometimes contrasting ways the musicians related to their origins: Joel "kept an eye" on his Long Island roots even as he often "looked upon his native ground with an ironic or cynical" gaze, while Springsteen "was unabashedly exuberant in celebrating the Jersey Shore in the face of its dilapidation." Despite a tendency toward verbosity (phrases like "an efflorescence of cultural democracy" abound), this is an engrossing take on two music legends who documented the glory and melancholy of "ordinary American life."
